If you, like many people, use Facebook to covertly check out the profiles of friends, acquaintances, strangers and ex’s you may have been worried to hear rumours circulating that your secret scrolling could be traced back to you .

The latest hoax doing the rounds on the social media platform has left people worried as it purports to reveal a list of your hidden “followers”.

Or to put it another way, people who have been stalking you on Facebook.

According to the rumours, the website will give you the list if you go to the “block” section of the settings and type in “following me”.

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Unfortunately, this idea is nothing but a ruse - and an old one at that.

Regardless, a message is spreading across the Mark Zuckerberg-founded website - and people are getting frightened.

One user wrote: “I Just learned something new. If you go to account settings, blocking, block users, and type in “following me”, without the quotes, you might be surprised just who is following you. I had a lot people on it that I had no clue who they were. They are blocked now. I had to block them one at a time.

“Creepy..most were middle eastern. And all my posts are to friends, not public.”

Tech experts at ThatsNonsense.com explain: “Why Facebook would implement a feature that would allow users to see their paid stalkers or “covert followers” seems oddly counter-productive, yet this logical flaw hasn’t seemed to stop these rumours from going viral, regularly.”